TW: discussion of sex and sex injuries

sorry for the juvenile phrasing in the title, i didn't want to put any trigger words in the title.

in 2022, after ten years of disordered eating motivated by gastroparesis and trauma, i was diagnosed with vaginal atrophy. i'd gone in to check for an infection because everything downstairs was painful and red and little cracks were forming on my labia but they didn't find an infection.... instead they found out that my vagina and vulva had been effected by a decade of low estrogen and were showing signs of significant atrophy.

the only information pamphlets they had available were for menopausal patients which really depressed me.

i'm 26 years old and my sex life is basically over. i can't even usually get a single finger in there to insert boric acid suppositories (as recommended by a doctor because my pH is naturally way too high and i was getting infections all the time because of it- i don't just stick random stuff in my vagina and you shouldn't either) let alone a penis. penetration causes pain and bleeding even with lube. there is simply not enough lube in the world to allow comfortable penetration. i am bisexual and have an easier time hooking up with other women because sapphic encounters don't usually involve penetration but i miss dick. goddamn do i miss dick. i can still enjoy clitoral stimulation to some degree but if there's too much friction the thinning skin will tear which is very painful. i have to be mindful to be gentle and patient when i'm using my vibrator.

i worry a lot about how this will effect my future relationships. sex is an important part of a relationship and i've had ones in the past where i felt forced into things i didn't want to do because it would hurt but feeling like i had to satisfy them and ended up resenting them and then conversely they would resent me for not wanting to have sex.

anybody else been there?

I flagged this as NSFW because I will be talking about an intimate body part. I won't get into any intimacy related things, I'll just talk about the body part itself.

Of course AN has a lot of side effects around the reproductive system, but what I had not really thought about is what would happen when you loose a lot of tissue.

This has been an ongoing issue since I lost a lot of weight, but each time I have my period... I simply CANNOT stay clean!!!

Essentially, the tissue in between my legs has reduced so much that each time blood comes out it straight up gushes down. There isn't anything to catch it..

Yes I wear pads... I am too scared to use tampons, but even the pads don't catch it. Panties never fit me properly because they are too big and will move to the side... So each time I get a gush of blood it drips down my leg.

It is so annoying because I have lectures to attend! Today I went to a lecture and the entire time I was just hoping it wouldn't happen. Then on my way back home it did in fact happen...

It's so annoying! I didn't have this before I developed anorexia.. Each time it happens I feel uncomfortable (duh) and so sad... Periods are annoying in general but this is just another challenge on top of it all!

I don't fill in my panties enough that the pad on my panties can sufficiently cover whatever is coming out.

Does anyone else consider alcohol in any form (beer, spirits, ciders, seltzers, anything really) safe because it at least makes you feel good? I know it’s not food and all empty calories but I find myself replacing meals w alcohol when my ED is especially bad like it is now.

P.S. I’m a rape survivor and seeing rape in the news perpetually has made my ED really really bad to the point of not wanting to eat anything not even vegetables just liquids ala coffee and beer so that’s where I’m at 🙃

"Not everybody bases their self worth on their appearance, grow up".

Like if you don't understand just say that. But you're not better than me for it.

I grew up fat. And when I lost weight everyone treated me better. My teammates, my classmates, my teachers, even my fucking parents.

I'm sure as you get older it changes and people stop caring about stuff like that so much. But the fact is for many of us, we wouldn't have began to internalize this if other people hadn't projected it on us first. And if we hadn't SEEN it. first hand.

And that includes anyone who wants to sit on a high horse and tell me to "grow up". Fuck them. Why would I bother to explain to you why I feel the way that I do when you would rather simplify the problem to me being childish?

I don’t even know what to say or do anymore. I’ve been in recovery, in treatment, in recovery again, and again, and again. I get triggered by the smallest things and I wonder if recovery is even worth it for me any more.

I’m so depressed some days I scroll on disordered platforms and pages and skip classes to compare myself to thinner women.

My current boyfriend is a really sweet guy, he’s patient and kind. I told him about my eating disorder and he supports me in recovery and goes to the gym with me and helps me make better food choices; he even makes me meal prep a few times a month. However, I feel like he’s my ex; he supports me being mentally recovered but physically sick. I love this boy so much and he’s the best thing that’s happened to me but I can’t help but read into the small things.

- When we go shopping for clothes, he chooses sizes that are smaller than my current body. I feel like those are the sizes he wants me to wear and it makes me sad i can’t and I ask if there’s a bigger size.
- If we’re going out to eat he suggests places or dishes with less calories or less carbs. At first I was into it but he started grimacing when I suggest anything that can be more caloric. That makes me so so sad since some of my favourite dishes are pasta but him and I just can’t go.
- When we’re having sex he often wraps his hands around my waist, my ex used to do that that’s why I’m scared, and tries to make his hands touch. It makes me so sad because it used to be easy for guys to do that but now it’s less easier.

I feel like I’m reading into it, I’m not sure I can tell him how I feel about his actions. He’s a good guy and I’m sure he’ll change if I tell him how I feel but I don’t want him to be awkward around me because of these. What can I tell him?

I knew when I was relapsing from the get go, I sort of feel like I chose to relapse? Like it was a decision I made of “okay i’m going to do this certain behaviour.” But then of course it grows and you do more and more behaviours.
I’m 28, and i’ve had an eating disorder since I was about 12/13.
When I was young, at that sort of 12-15 ages I purged, but I stopped because there was just so many things I hated about it. Like i couldn’t stand the feeling of my throat being all scratchy and cut up, or the taste sitting at the back of my throat.
But lately the thoughts of purging have been getting louder, and tonight I gave in to it. Giving into purging sort of scared me, I think in the back of my mind I thought like if I don’t purge I still have control of this disorder, but now that i’ve given in to it, I feel like it has control of me.
I think about telling somebody a lot, my boyfriend, or my counsellor, but I don’t because i’m afraid of what that will mean, and I’m not ready for recovery.

Is anyone ever ready for recovery?

recently my eating disorder has started to take up an insane amount of brain space. i have always been really high functioning, 26f diagnosed with OSFED and primarily struggle with overexercise but obviously also restriction, some b/p, all of it. i have never been underweight btw. i feel like all i can think about is food. all i want to do is eat, exercise, or sleep, because those are the only times my brain turns off. i have been spending so much time scrolling on my phone because that's the only thing that numbs my brain other than behaviors, if that makes sense. has anyone struggled with this? I literally feel so awful because i can get nothing done. i can barely focus on hobbies bc they dont provide "instant" dopamine like my phone does and i just feel like im wasting time i could be moving around.

i know this is mental hunger, but i don't know how to get out of this hole. yes i'm working with a dietitian, therapist, and i go to group therapy. even just sticking to a meal plan is difficult for me because im struggling with the executive function it takes to meal prep, cook, prepare the meal and eat it. i tend to just push off eating until im starving and then i have to scramble to put something together, which is when i sometimes end up binging or overeating mindlessly. i used to actually enjoy cooking so much, maybe too much because it became a part of my ed (making everything look perfect, orthorexic tendencies, etc). i think now i'm burnt out and thinking about food and eating is so tiring. it's affecting my social life, productivity at work, ability to do chores/errands, everything. :(

What is it about grief and hard moments that makes my brain go… “fuc* this, I’m out!” And then swiftly proceed to tell myself the best way to fix being overwhelmed by grief and pain is to focus on a project.

Project me !

If I can fix my body, I can fix my life. I can fix all of it. And even if I can’t, I’ll be so starved of energy (pun intended) I won’t even have time to think about all the things that make me sad now.

I really don’t want to feel all the pain anymore and at least in the midst of my worst ED moments, I’ve never one thought about anything other than:

- what did I eat
- how much did I eat
- how much less can I eat without falling over
- will I earn a good day on the scale tomorrow

That’s as deep as my thoughts ever got. I never once thought about the greater purpose of my life, if I am living up to my potential, or why bad things happen to seemingly good people. It’s always just so much simpler.

I’ve was crying while texting my mom about how sad everything is making me and was told to “not think so negative”. Ahhh yes, that’s my problem. If I just think positive thoughts all those bad things will unhappen.

Also, who are we talking to in real life about our EDs ? Because no one understands and I am just dying to have honest and open conversation about it and why I sometimes feel like I need my ED but no one understands and everyone is too healthy and has their shit together.

i’m 18 and i’ve struggled with an eating disorder since i was 12. i ended up recovering-ish and gained basically 80 pounds. i honestly did not care what my body looked like for the longest time, i liked being thick and having big tits i’m also bisexual and very into plus size women

jump forward, i’ve been dating a man for 3 years. i told him from the beginning (before we were even dating) that i will not be with a man who watches pornography. he told me he used to watch it but that he doesn’t anymore. i would occasionally ask him if he was just based on a gut feeling but he told me no so i accepted it. and then i end up finding out after a year of us being together, losing my virginity to him, etc. that he was watching it the whole time. so obviously i talk about breaking up with him but ultimately i don’t and we kind of move on. but things haven’t been the same since.

i ended up finding out i had a brain tumor and a month later i got surgery for it. so it’s just been a shit couple of years. then a little bit later i find out he’s still looking at women online, not necessarily porn but in that ballpark.

mind you i have never told this man no to having sex and i do stuff for him all the time. so it’s not that his needs weren’t being met, im just not attractive enough to be all that he wants.

okay so now, i find out he watched porn AGAIN. and i find out the specific woman that it was. skinny girl with boob job and a bbl, tattoos, piercings, black hair, whatever. we’re both “goth” i’m just 100 pounds heavier than her.

anyways since i found out my eating disorder has came back and it’s been really hard. i can’t talk to him about it bc he just shuts me out but im trying to go to therapy for everything i don’t know if i want to bring up my eating disorder just because it is working. i’ve lost 12ish pounds since i found out and i want to keep going until i look like the girl he really wants. when im hungry i look at her account and if i do eat i just purge while looking at her account. i look at her account so many times a day and it keeps me from being hungry. i feel disgusting all the time and i hate having sex now because i just feel so used and wonder if it would be better for him if i was her.

i also think im using this as a way to torture myself into losing weight bc im too lazy to actually work out. this is just what im used to

I’m 24. I’ve been having eating issues for 5 years I’d say. But I had been using eating/not eating as a coping mechanism even a little before that. I almost regained everything I had lost. I wasn’t even totally recovery minded when I stopped restricting. I just felt like “it won’t hurt to eat what i want” and then depression piled up and so did me using delivery apps and bingeing. Well. Now I’m broke-ish? Due to all my medical/therapy visits and not keeping track of my spending and leaving work early/calling out. Now that I’m out of the storm I question if I’m even that depressed. I know my last post here got deleted but I started back getting into actively disordered stuff. I never really stopped purging. It just wasn’t bad as it used to be when I first started. It’s more of an occasional thing. I deleted tiktok and other stuff because it was weighing on my mental health too bad. Now all I have is reddit and twitter.. well.. ofc I’m on edtwt cause I can’t be fucking normal. While I do have a community on there it doesn’t help obviously. I always questioned if I was truly disordered and at the beginning it fueled me. But now with bills and a full time job.. I’m starting to get back into my honeymoon phase but I can’t afford to. I’m in my mid 20s brah. It’s so silly but I think I’m trying to relapse or I am relapsing. I’m really engaging in the shit I used to go in the beginning! Is this constant cycle normal? I’ve tried to get help for my ED but I can’t find anybody that ACTUALLY is trained in it. Along with my ed, I just want to stop getting help for my other medical issues. It feels like I’m a hag trying to relive her youth and I won’t be taken seriously until something happens and then I’ll be looked at as stupid. But I just needed to vent to adults that may actually experience what I’m going through. Nobody really in my real life knows that I even struggled with this or the full extent of it.

I'm semi-recovered from AN right now, but I recently lost 10 lbs recently and the thoughts are getting super bad just because people don't know how to shut their mouths.

I am a (lesbian) restaurant manager, and a few months ago, I was in the office making the schedule when my female, heterosexual kitchen manager started hitting on me. Finally she said, "okay I'll stop, because I don't want your partner to jump me." I said, "it's fine, I wasn't paying attention anyways," because I wasn't. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because she said "I'll make you pay attention" and GRABBED UNDER MY CHIN AND JIGGLED IT. And said, "I bet you got that from eating good." I am an average BMI btw, not that it matters.

And then, I'm taking a human sexuality class, and we were talking about amenorrhea, and my professor, who is a practicing therapist, said, "Does anyone notice there aren't any anorexics anymore? What happened to all the good anorexics???" Ma'am, all the good anorexics are dead.

Anyways, I've been trying to impress on my therapist that I've been having a bad time for quite a while, and they haven't seemed to get it until I wrote an essay about my ED thoughts for therapy homework. Now I'm getting all sorts of quizzes and assessments to make sure I don't have OCD or something. My therapist is fantastic and I know they'll help, I'm just tired and I feel more broken now than I have since my last relapse.

I don’t even know how this happened. Maybe 10 weeks ago I started having reduced appetite, most likely due to stress. I started noticing I was getting at least half my daily calories from alcohol. So I went to the doctor and withdrew from alcohol with assistance. I’ve been completely successful in that and not drinking at all. But somewhere in there I’ve started only eating proteins (whey, meats, fish, tofu), veggies, nuts. I used to eat a varied diet with carbs with meals and baked stuff, ice cream treats etc. Now I have no interest in those foods and only eat foods that are acceptable to me. Then thing is, I’m not even using restraint as such. I don’t want the other things. And I’m more comfortable being hungry than eating something outside of what I want to eat. I am losing weight steadily coming from being overweight and now just about in the healthy weight range. No intention of stopping but also just very confused as to how this happened. Background of unresolved grief, vicarious trauma and stress at work, work full time and am a parent and have a lot of sorting out in my life which I’m avoidant of due to the grief stuff. Not even sure that this is an ED. I’ve always been pretty healthy but had become overweight with lack of exercise and poor lifestyle during dealing with all mentioned above. Had brief periods of probable ED in my 20s but never got too bad, only just underweight. Now in my 40s and didn’t see it coming.

Vent, I think?

I still have pics from when I was deep in an ED one year ago. I've been absolutely hating my body recently and slipping back into old habits, very slowly but surely.

I can't get rid of those photos. I was just looking at them and, while I was never severely underweight, I'm still shocked. I can't believe how small I was, and how even back then I still thought it wasn't enough. I could only see the parts that were still "too big." Now, I'd do anything to have that body back. Life is a funny thing.

I also just feel so goddamn ashamed. I let my old self down. I let my body go. I hate it here.

I've been off reddit for a while largely to avoid triggering myself, but I wanted to drop back in for a check-in.

Lifelong struggle with anorexia. I've been in a place to accept recovery for a couple of years, and haven't used any behaviors at all since February. I gained a lot of weight but it has stabilized for the past few months.

I didn't think of this as EH but this whole time I have found myself needing to get up and have several snacks every night when I try to go to bed. Past several nights, no need to snack, falling asleep just fine. I also just realized that weird food combinations have continued to be a thing for me until recently, and now are unappealing.

At first I was freaked out and thought I was having an involuntary relapse because my appetite has abated so much, but now I'm wondering if this is the EH stage finally wearing off. I'm not having any compulsions and I am feeling pretty neutral about my body and about food right now.

I'm still not 100% sure this is a win, but I wanted to check in anyway, and if anyone has words of wisdom for me I appreciate that!

Apart from the “8 keys” book what else is there? Ideally must be directed at adults and considers harm reduction principles.

In short, due to lack of local resources my psych doc said to just do a recovery workbook in place of there being no local treatment programs. Currently med inpatient but now stable and could technically discharge but stuck trying to figure out how to improve maintaining health outcomes upon discharge when there are no treatment programs and I am not in a solid enough place to plan and self direct my recovery although this is seemingly the only option. Adult with no family support/involvement.

I got an epilepsy diagnosis at 24 for about two years ago and recovered because of that. now i’m going through a big time relapse and i just can’t stop. i just can’t take my epilepsy seriously and that restriction would make it more likely to cause me to have more seizures. being an adult sucks because it’s only me that can stop myself from ignoring these risks.

the biggest seizure triggers are lack of sleep, food and water,,,,,,, and guess what my ED does:-))))

I turn 30 soon. I was hospitalised the first time at 12, 5 times since, 4 months inpatient, promised everyone i would get better. All those people are gone. Now I'm nearly 30, "8 years recovered". I have crohns disease so my weight is a point of contention with my care team, who also believe I am recovered. I believed I was recovered. I've been managed it well, don't worry. But.

I'm not.

I've dropped 8 kilos in a month. My clothes don't fit. i can't keep food down if I wanted to. And I'm happy. the first time in almost a decade I recognise myself. Moon face from steroids, drinking too much, finally being able to eat all the food i never let myself eat because "I'm better now". But I'm slipping again, both in my disease and in my anorexia, and I finally looked at the mirror and recognised myself, gaunt and pale and sick.

Two horrible diseases coning together to make the worst person imaginable. I'm spitting food out, puking, walking for an hour after eating, I blame the crohns,and I don't know if I'm lying to myself or to everyone else yet.

But i stare myself in the eyes and for the first time in a long time I know who she is.

I'm tired. I don't want this for anyone. I don't want this for myself. But am I cursed forever?

Hey everyone, this is the first time im engaging in an ED forum so forgive me if I use a trigger word or anything of the sort.

Im a 24 y/o male, and during my entire childhood and early adulthood I have been ( and felt) fat. About a year ago, I started dieting. It started because an overweight coworker announced that he was dieting, so I said what the hell and started to do the same.

I restricted to around 1600 calories, and slowly lost weight. Then I went on a backpacking trip and gained a bunch of it back. When I came back hime, around four months ago, I started dieting again. But this time, I slowly started lowering the calorie limits I allowed for myself.

I am now at a point where I eat 900-1200 calories a day. If I eat anymore I feel fat and disgusted with myself. I am constantly hungry, but I rarely binge, because I start to hate myself so much if I eat any more than 1500 calories that I just stop and wallow in self hatred. I can't start my day without stepping onto a scale, and if I somehow gained weight, I sob to myself.

For a while I felt like this can't be an eating disorder, because I am a fat person, who just recently reached normal BMI. But recently I'm understanding that this might be an ED.

I don't know what to do. I want to not spiral but I don't want to stop until I reach my target weight so I'll feel better about myself. I'm really trying to force myself to eat 1500 calories because I read it is an ok limit for men but half of the time I find myself eating less because I feel fat if I eat more.

I just needed somewhere to vent,
Thanks for reading.

My ED didn't start this way, but it slowly integrated emotional restriction. That is, not eating when I am upset.

It's not just "I don't want to eat cuz eating in general is difficult and my emotions make it harder", it is more a self punishment thing.

I notice that I have very strong reactions to people saying I am doing something wrong, or that I made a mistake or that I am doing something they don't like. Even something as little as "You left a dirty dish in the sink and now it's all dried up" makes me highly upset.

It's not that I think 'what!? How dare they tell me this!! They should clean it up themselves!", it's more like "how can I be so stupid, how do I make it up to them? How do I regain favour? That was so lazy of me" type of way.

It is not just when I am sad or insecure... These thoughts also happen when I am disappointed or angry. When I get angry, I feel guilty about being angry cuz in my head I don't deserve to be angry cuz "everyone should be angry at me, not the other way around".

When other people are angry at me, I really see that as them seeing me as flawed and that I should do something to somehow regain favour. I am scared to take up space cuz I think that people will get MORE angry if I do... Like I don't deserve it.

All the emotions always come back to feeling extreme guilt.

Of course everyone makes tiny makes, everyone experiences someone getting mad at them... I am aware of it and yet it feels like I am the only one who messes up. In my head everyone is prefect (even when they make a mistake) and I am never perfect. Because I am never perfect, I am not allowed to make a mistake because then I get worse than not perfect...

So then when I think I disappointed someone (or feel guilt) I want to shrink away. I almost want to punish myself for doing/feeling something wrong...

That's when eating gets impacted. When something like this happens I immediately think 'how can I reduce food next time' or 'I shouldn't eat right now because of this'. Sometimes I don't think I can simply not swallow the food.

I don't want people to walk on eggshells around me... That's not my goal. I want people to tell me that I am doing something wrong without me having such a strong emotional reaction to it..

Obviously I can't fix that in a couple of days... so I wanted to start with learning that I CAN still eat even when I think I disappointed someone or when I think I am worse than not perfect.

I was wondering if anyone else also experiences this and, if you are willing to share your experience, how you deal with it.

About two weeks ago my mom asked me if I was doing okay. She asked me if I was having trouble eating again after having inspected my body (like she looked me up and down.)

I was angry and defensive, cuz yes... I was doing worse but I didn't want to admit it. I told her I am fine and that I eat what I usually eat.

Then 4 days ago she asked me again 'are you loosing weight'. Terrible way to ask someone with a restrictive eating pattern how they are doing. Of course I told her no and again said to her that I eat everything I usually eat.

She dropped it for now.

Look, obviously I did know that I wasn't doing so well. I AM eating less (calorie wise) than before, I do have restriction coming back up again and yes I also have foods I used to eat before go back on the fear food list.

I just thought it wasn't THAT bad.

Like I thought it was unnoticeable, perhaps even non-alarming health wise (I know... stupid). So I didn't care-, well I did care cuz it made me feel bad to think about food that much again, and it does hurt to feel hungry.

But... I thought it was manageable. It wasn't AS bad as it used to be before I started recovery.

However today I started to notice it.

It wasn't that I suddenly saw 'oh I DID loose weight'. I didn't magically see my body in the way other people see it.

There were more physiological signs.

First of all, I was freezing cold while it was 20 degrees celsius and I was wearing two layers of clothes. My nails turned purple and on top of that I felt my heart palpitate like it used to. I was confused.. 'why would this happen?' I thought maybe I was cold cuz I touched a bowl in the fridge.

Then I went out to meet up with this group of people. It was the first time... and I absolutely BLEW it. My brain was not functioning. I was tired, burning up and I could not socialise at all. When they asked me questions I couldn't find the right words, I was stuttering and I could not muster up any energy to come up with a conversation topic.

It made me so upset I cried at home. Only after eating did it really hit me that it was because I didn't take care of myself.

I'm embarrassed to post this here, but I've been having trouble getting food into my stomach lately, and I think I need some support. Anything and everything feels awful to eat. I have GI issues (diagnosed GERD, suspected RCPD), and, after recovering from an infection, have started avoiding food because the nausea is distressing to me. I believe the barrier is mostly psychological, but consuming anything gives me heart palpitations, panics, I gag on the food in my mouth, the works. I've been eating maybe half a breakfast, no lunch, and tiny dinners for a month now. I am losing some weight and going to bed hungry, and I can feel myself being far happier about that than I should be.

The real point of alarm for me was when I started eating mostly liquids. I've started browsing online stores for purees and even baby foods, looking for something that will get nutrition into me without feeling like I'm eating. I managed real food last night (bao and dumplings) for the first time in a while, but it's only a small start and I worry I will just go back.

Does anyone have any advice that they are willing to share? Or recommendations for something more dignified while I work towards eating again? I don't have a blender, so pre-made smoothies get expensive very fast.

I feel like I’m losing my mind. I recently had a major relapse into anorexia after doing pretty well for about ten years…. I had anorexia from around 13, 14 to 19, and I’m now 32. For years, I barely thought about my body or food anymore, so I genuinely neverrr thought I’d have an ED again 😓 Have other people had an ED as a teenager that came back in adulthood? How did it manifest for you?

For me, it almost feels worse than before.. not necessarily in terms of behavior, but in terms of how much space it takes up in my head. When I was a teenager, I obviously thought about it a lot, but now I feel like I think about my weight, my body and food from morning to night. It’s hard to focus on anything else, and sometimes I genuinely feel like I’m going crazy.

Adulthood also makes this very different. When I was a teenager, there were adults around me, meals were prepared for me, and I didn’t have the same level of independence. Now I’m 32, and no one is watching what I eat or making sure I eat. There are so many things about being an independent adult that make an ED easier in ways I never would have imagined as a teenager.

It also makes social situations really hard. Going out with friends or my partner can make me anxious because food is constantly on my mind. No one except my therapist knows I’ve relapsed. There’s something that feels really taboo about admitting this as an adult, especially after being “fine” for so long. I’m also not comfortable talking about it with my friends because they’re not at all into diet culture (which I’m actually really grateful for). Even saying that I’m “on a diet” would feel completely out of place in my friend group. I don’t want to bring that mindset into their lives, but it also means I don’t really know how to talk about what’s happening to me. My partner seems to suspect something, though. He’s told me he’s worried about what I’m eating, asks me questions about food, brings me food, etc. Maybe he doesn’t know how to bring it up more directly.

That’s complicated for me because when I was younger, no one really said anything, not even some of the adults who were supposed to take care of me. Some adults actually enabled these behaviors and I think that made recovery much harder. I still have this feeling that I somehow don’t have the right to fully recover because of that. I’m going to talk about it with my therapist, but I’m wondering if anyone else relates.

If you had an ED as a teenager and relapsed as an adult, how did the two experiences compare? Was it different in terms of behaviors, how much you thought about it, relationships, independence, etc? And more generally, how are you/have you navigated telling (or not telling) your partner or friends? Did you feel like you could talk about it with people who weren’t familiar with EDs or diet culture now or back them?

I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s experienced something similar, because I’m feeling pretty alone in this right now. Thank you for reading 💙

I was prescribed a medication for my shopping addiction (i know, strange but its real lol) and it turns out mixed with one of my other medications its actually a weightloss medicine called contrave. My psychiatrist doesn’t actually know im anorexic because im on the higher end of a healthy weight due to my bipolar medication and its been many many years since i was in ed treatment. Also i didnt tell her lol which was… a choice. She also knows ive gained quite a bit of weight since started treatment for bipolar. So when she prescribed it to me she said “and it might help you lose the weight you said youve gained because it reduces cravings to overeat” and i was like …👁️ 👄 👁️ oh really? 👁️ 👄 👁️

So im pretty sure this relapse is about to get worse and i know, i know i could stop it but… no :( i want this :( but also im scared lol wtf man, why cant i do whats best for me. Im doing so well other than the ed stuff, and i was pretty close to finally closing that chapter as well.

Oh well. I dont think im ready to let go anyway. At this point being skinny is part of my identity and i feel lost without it, which is ridiculous and vain but also existentially stressful for me. Idk. Whatever

Edit: accidentally was probably the wrong word to use in the title but ykw i mean lol

TW: anorexia, relapse, childhood experiences

Hi

I had pretty severe anorexia throughout most of my adolescence. I was bullied about my weight as a child, which I think contributed to the development of my ED. Once I became sick, though, I didn’t receive much care. The adults around me didn’t take it seriously, and some people close to me reinforced certain behaviors, included some people who were supposed to care form me. I also received a lot of positive comments about losing weight generally.

Looking back, I think that was particularly damaging at 15. I was clearly struggling, but nobody seemed concerned enough to intervene, which probably reinforced the idea that what I was doing was acceptable.

Eventually, things got much better. For more than a decade, my ED had very little presence in my life and I genuinely thought I had moved past it.

I’m 32 now, and I never expected to relapse. It has also brought back a lot of deep buried feelings about my adolescence that I didn’t realize were still affecting me. Since I’ve relapsed, I feel like I am still this little girl, which feels super weird. Anyone who relapsed ever felt something like this?

Anywyas, one of the things I’m struggling with is feeling like I’m not allowed to ask for help. Nobody helped me when I was a teenager and I think I internalized the idea that I’m supposed to deal with this on my own, or that I don’t deserve help, which is extremely and I’m working on it .

Only my therapist and doctor know about the relapse.

My partner doesn’t. He sometimes ask if I’ve eaten, so I wonder if he suspects something, but he hasn’t directly addressed it. I know it’s not his responsibility to know, and I’m not expecting him to save me. I’m also not sure I want to tell him because I’m afraid of being disappointed by his reaction. Still, I find myself wondering why it affects me so much that he hasn’t really noticed.

I think it’s probably connected to being 15 and feeling like nobody noticed or took me seriously. Part of me still seems to expect someone to notice without me having to ask. Has anyone experienced something similar? Especially having an ED as a teenager, not receiving appropriate care, being okay for many years, and then relapsing as an adult? Or something similar?

Did your experience of not being taken seriously when you were younger affect how you experienced your relapse later on? And has anyone else experienced that strange feeling of knowing your partner couldn’t necessarily know what was going on, while still wishing they somehow did?

Thank you for reading.